


Indiana Jones, Carmen San Diego, and the Doomed Date

by piaffe417



Series: Heartbeats [2]
Category: Blood & Treasure (TV)
Genre: Can’t write about this show without mentioning strudel, Carmen San Diego, F/M, Indiana Jones - Freeform, Poolside chats, Post-Episode: s01e07 Escape from Casablanca, Wherein it ends on a downer but we know they turned out okay, post ep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-08-18 21:43:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20198638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piaffe417/pseuds/piaffe417
Summary: “The best analogy he can come up with is that he’s Indiana Jones (minus the bull whip and awesome hat) and she’s Carmen San Diego (with a badass wardrobe). At the end of the day, their goals tend to diverge.”





	Indiana Jones, Carmen San Diego, and the Doomed Date

_Cause when love starts out_  
_It's all peachy_  
_I love you, you love me - seems easy_  
_It's like a walk in the park._  
_But sometimes it takes an act of my will_  
_And a walk in a park turns to uphill_  
_But I promise to give you my heart.  
_  
_I will choose to love you, yeah_  
_Even though I wanna stay mad,_  
_Even though I wanna get angry,_  
_Though it may be easier to walk away,_  
_I will choose to stay and love you._ ~ “Choose You” – Stan Walker  
  
He awakens in a tent in Casablanca in the midst of a pile of blankets and pillows that smell of Lexi, but without her beside him.  
  
It’s not the first time he’s fallen asleep next to her and woken up alone, of course. Lexi is not now (nor has ever been) what one could describe as “a cuddly sleeper” by nature. Nope. She requires quick access to an escape route at all times – especially when she’s in a particularly vulnerable state, such as sleep.  
  
Now, it must be said that, should a direct escape route be absolutely unavailable because perhaps (!) Lexi is to be forced to spend the night in police custody for - say - parachuting into Vatican City (hypothetically it’s Vatican City, but it really could be any sovereign nation, of course), she’ll make do. In such a hypothetical situation (should it arise), Lexi has, in fact, no qualms about using the suspect who actually operated said parachute and is seated right next to her (Danny, for instance) as her own personal pillow. (After all, no one’s going anywhere in that situation; the Vatican police are very strict about this.) But since that’s a rare and extreme (and hypothetical) circumstance that only happens when there’s a complete and utter misunderstanding with Interpol, the Carabinieri, and a handful of Swiss guards, the most accurate thing to say about a sleeping Lexi Vaziri is that she likes her space.  
  
But the desert night that’s past was cold and the tent small and sparsely furnished; Lexi and Danny were exhausted from the events of the day (_the week, the month_…) and it was such a relief to be _anywhere_ that offered both shelter and a low likelihood of Gwen or the mafia locating them (again) that both collapsed into an uncoordinated heap. The mismatched bedding became a cocoon as their bodies fell naturally together and sleep quickly claimed them.  
  
That Lexi automatically made herself into the big spoon as they settled in neither surprised nor upset Danny, who knew full well that she always preferred to hold onto something rather than to be held onto herself. It’s the single characteristic that best sums up her entire being, yet it didn’t stop him from noting (and enjoying) her contented sigh as she burrowed her face gently into the narrow space between his shoulder blades right before unconsciousness claimed them both.  
  
Mere hours before, Lexi was a fierce warrior who held her own in hand-to-hand combat with the equally formidable Gwen, but in sleep, Lexi has always reminded Danny of a contented kitten. The corners of her mouth curl up ever so slightly at the ends, her lashes reach down to touch her cheeks, and her hands typically fold up into her chest. She looks beautiful and innocent and harmless in those moments even though threads of steel run through her core and she can rise and fight in a single, coordinated movement if the occasion calls for it.  
  
In other words, Lexi is a mass of contradictions. Always has been. It’s the thing that both attracts him to her and drives him absolutely insane. He fully comprehends the root of this friction, of course – he’d have to be an idiot not to. They never have and never will make sense on paper (or in practice) because there’s a gulf of culture and belief and experience between them that can’t be traversed in simple, direct terms.  
  
The best analogy he can come up with is that he’s Indiana Jones (minus the bull whip and awesome hat) and she’s Carmen San Diego (with a badass wardrobe). At the end of the day, their goals tend to diverge.  
  
Except when they don’t.  
  
Sometimes they manage to align and even advance in lockstep. Sometimes their goals put them in the _same_ canoe in the _same_ river paddling in the _same_ direction. It’s rare, but when it happens, the two work in perfect synchronicity and somehow sleep in a shared cocoon through a long cold night that opens up into a blue, cloudless morning.  
  
It’s the rarity that makes those moments special. Danny savors as much of it as he can when he awakens beside the empty space that’s still curved into the shape of an absent Lexi. The chill of the night lingers lazily in the quickly warming air while the smell of smoke from dozens of nearby campfires fills his nostrils.  
  
He stumbles stiffly from the confines of the tent and Lexi immediately offers him a cup of steaming tea, poured with a flourish like she’s done it her whole life. When he says off-handedly (and still half-asleep), “Good tea,” she beams with accomplishment like a little girl and announces, “It’s my first try.”  
  
In that split second, Danny sees a flash of what she must have looked like as a child – the lightness, the innocence, the hope – and his heart twinges with regret. That little girl barely had a chance to see the world before life happened to her in a bigger way than it happened to most people twice her age. Before sharp-edged, sharp-tongued, and sharp-nerved Lexi existed, there lived a girl who loved simple accomplishments, who had a mother and a father and a home and who undoubtedly could take simple joy in a cup of tea.  
  
If Danny didn’t already know he loved her, the tea and the way she looked at him when she handed him the cup would have sealed it.  
  
Luckily, he was a goner long before that. He’s honest enough with himself (most days) to acknowledge that he’s loved her the whole time. He loved her long before they tangled with Farouk and her father was killed, long before the FBI clipped his strings and she went back to thieving. He loved her before he had a law practice, before Cleopatra became a reality, and before they began this worldwide scavenger hunt.  
  
He fell in love with her the first time she called him Danny.  
  
It’s such a simple thing to speak a person’s name. Back when they first met, he was Agent McNamara and she was Ms. Vaziri. But one day the formalities dropped and she called him Danny with such a tone of reverence and warmth that he hasn’t heard his name spoken aloud since without thinking of it. To this day, there’s wonderment in her voice whenever she says it. Even when she’s fuming or in moments when she’s sarcastically poking a hole in his latest (greatest) pun, the way she says it is unique – special. Her eyes widen, her breath catches ever so slightly in her throat, and the word “Danny” comes out with a more musical quality than anything else he’s ever heard.  
  
Maybe that’s why he tells her the unvarnished truth when they’re stretched out by the pool later, a few bottles of very expensive wine drained and the spoils of Lexi’s expert search of La Mer’s stash house lying between them. It isn’t that he’s avoided the truth in the past, but rather that both have become extremely expert at deflecting all discussion of how they really feel about anything (least of all each other). So when the conversation turns unexpectedly in that direction, it isn’t the wine that loosens his tongue as much as his memory of the night before and the expression in her eyes when she handed him a cup of morning tea.  
  
It begins innocently, of course. He looks at the money she’s proudly presented and his old FBI voice reflexively resurfaces: “You know we can’t keep this.”  
  
She rolls her eyes like an annoyed teenager. “I _know_, but can’t we just daydream?”  
  
Sure he can, but it’s the daydreaming that opens the door to what comes next. The daydreaming and the recent memory of her curled into him in the blankets, the feeling of her body warming his, the rhythmic lull of her breath, the smell of her hair wafting over the pillows. His mind is trapped in those moments when she asks, “If you could go anywhere, be with anyone, do anything – where would you go?”  
  
He hesitates - partially because his brain needs to catch up to the present, but also because there’s a clear opportunity to lead them to safe ground here and he needs time to decide whether or not to take it. “Do you want the truth?”  
  
She’s flushed with victory and flippant: “I’d expect no less from Danny McNamara.”  
  
She smells faintly of jasmine and her eyes shine so that he has to look away to answer. “No place I’d rather be.”  
  
She immediately accuses him of being drunk, her mood still light and heady, and he counters with eye contact to prove his veracity. “I’m buzzed, but it’s still true.”  
  
She sobers immediately, her gaze turning contemplative. The giddiness from seconds before evaporates into the night air and Danny waits quietly for the thought she works loose from her mind:  
  
“My dad always said we were right for each other.” She pauses. “On good days, I agree.”  
  
He can’t help but ask the obvious follow up. “And the bad ones?”  
  
She laughs ruefully and looks away for a moment, organizing her words. “I wonder if we’re more like Marc Antony and Cleopatra. Star-crossed. Doomed. _Cursed_.”  
  
_In other words: Indiana Jones and Carmen San Diego. Two people who don’t stand a snowball’s chance of making it work long-term._  
  
He chuckles both at his own mental image and at her increasingly dire tone. “That’s a bit dramatic.”  
  
She gasps with mock horror but the undercurrent of truth threads the punctuation of her words. “Need I run through our history?”  
  
He takes her point reluctantly, pats her arm and looks away again. Both share a deep-seated fear of what they might become if they actually tried to make things work – always have – as well as the pathological insecurity that is only felt by orphans. Despite these obstacles, however, _and_ despite knowing full well that Indiana Jones and Carmen San Diego would never be matched on Tinder for _all_ of the reasons, Danny also knows that he and Lexi aren’t fictional characters. They’re _real_ people living in the _real_ world and he’s never given much credence to the whole star-crossed lover thing to begin with. Even Antony and Cleopatra managed to stay together long enough to have three kids and rule a small corner of the world, for goodness sake!  
  
Danny also happens to know that Lexi likewise doesn’t subscribe to the idea of relationships that are doomed to fail from the start, no matter what she just said. It’s just far easier to blame the universe for the way things turn out than it is to examine one’s own insecurities, so when Danny sums these thoughts up, the words that emerge are: “We’re not the same people we were when we first met.”  
  
Early on, both knew what it was to have suffered loss and the feeling of being an outcast, but now they’ve lost people together – people they both cared about – and have conversely come to understand what a true sense of belonging feels like. They’ve shared miles and they’ve fought (both others and each other) and they’ve loved and now they’re in a weird, not-quite-real oasis that is the _literal_ antithesis of the refugee camp they slept in last night, getting slightly buzzed beside a gorgeous pool and a stash of ill-gotten cash. It’s not a reach to say that the Danny and Lexi who first met would barely recognize the Danny and Lexi who lie side by side on this night.  
  
True to her nature, Lexi pares the issue down to the bone: “So who are we?”  
  
If he tells her they’re Indiana Jones and Carmen San Diego, she’ll mock him relentlessly for the rest of his days. (And she will never share strudel with him again.) If he defiantly declares that he is _not_ a house cat the way Shaw outlined to Lexi earlier that afternoon when Danny was supposed to be out of earshot (but wasn’t), he’ll open the door to an argument and spoil the mood. And finally, if he says he won’t know who they are until they get clear of this whole Cleopatra crusade, it will be a non-answer.  
  
There’s nothing Lexi hates more than a non-answer, so he kisses her.  
  
There’s a split second of doubt when he leans in and wonders if he somehow misread a signal, but when she kisses him back – deeply – all doubts evaporate and he stops thinking about anything rational, logical, or factual. There’s no Indiana Jones, no Carmen San Diego, no Farouk, no Shaw, and certainly no strudel.  
  
There’s just Lexi – the feel and smell of her and the deeply sexy noise she makes in the back of her throat when he rolls on his back and pulls her on top of him. It’s a move that’s one part passion, one part practicality, as he’s learned through previous experience that Lexi Vaziri is demanding in _all_ facets of her life - demanding and stubborn and opinionated and driven. And when she makes love, she is all of those things and more.  
  
Sex, then, has always been an extreme athletic event for them, for Lexi knows only one way to make love and it’s with tooth and claw and sinew. Teeth in her partner’s lip or shoulder, nails down his back, challenging him every step of the way. In other words, Lexi loves like she fights: passionately and without pulling punches. And despite his Oxford-wearing, law book-memorizing, mild-mannered outward appearance, Danny welcomes and matches her level of intensity and focus move for move. He also brings with him a tenderness, however, that seemed to catch Lexi by surprise the first time and now she seems to seek and encourage.  
  
It’s as though when they come together they levitate onto another plane, so locked into the shared moment are they. Breaths and heartbeats synchronize and then when the wave breaks and they crash down together, it feels as though they’ve fallen from a great height and mortality has reluctantly reclaimed them. But it’s always short-lived – sure, Lexi will lie apart from him for a few moments, but it’s never long before she lets loose a sexy, deep chuckle and reaches out to pull him close for round two. The second time is usually slower and gentler than the first – she even sometimes lets Danny set the pace – though it’s certainly no less demanding in the end.  
  
Maybe it’s because he wasn’t expecting or planning for any of it to happen this night or maybe because of the previous night they shared in the cocoon of the refugee camp, Danny somehow feels the closest he ever has to Lexi when they make love at La Mer’s – like they’ve finally gotten past some of their old baggage and moved into new territory. Better territory. _Firmer_ territory. Territory that might not crumble beneath their feet again.  
  
And then she goes for a swim, her phone buzzes, and everything changes. The territory becomes rocky again as he reads the words on the screen, mind racing out of control while every part of his body quickly transitions from sated warmth to clammy all over. Altogether, he realizes he feels more alone in this moment than he did that morning when he woke in the tent to find her already gone.  
  
If Danny was going to buy into the idea of a relationship being doomed from the start, it would be right now. Marc Antony and Cleopatra died for their love in the end – why should he expect anything different or better for Indiana Jones and Carmen San Diego? He and Lexi might well be different people than they were before, but this pain is all to familiar.  
  
He looks ruefully up at the sky and swears he can see a star suddenly burn out, leaving nothing but an empty black space in its wake. He knows exactly how that feels:  
  
_ Doomed._

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry to end this one on a downbeat, folks, but since we’ve seen the finale and know that everyone’s okay, I don’t actually feel all that bad. In fact, I got over all my guilt in the time it took me to type this sentence.
> 
> The post-eps have been fun to go through since these characters got more interesting as the season went on. Am hoping to have enough feel for them to maybe set up some original scenarios - we’ll see how that goes. Am really intrigued by the idea of what comes next...
> 
> Standard disclaimers apply - I don’t own them. I never have, never will, and I always put my toys away neatly when I’m done. Dialogue is not mine but any deviations from the episode as aired undoubtedly are. (Writers are human - you get it.) Thanks for reading!


End file.
